A Sermon for Dalkeith Road Church of Christ 26th July 2020
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant” (1 Cor. 13:4 ESV)
Today I get to consider one aspect of love within the body of Christ: Love does not envy. The Greek word used in this verse implies a very strong emotion that drives someone to action, which may be either positive or negative. In 1 Cor 13:4 the word is used in a negative way and can be translated as “burn with envy” or “boil with jealousy”. The Macquarie dictionary defines envy as “a feeling of discontent or mortification, usually with ill will, at seeing another’s superiority, advantages, or success” or “desire for some advantage possessed by another.” Effectively, envy is that feeling that you feel when someone else has something that you wish you had. It often leads to bitterness and resentment against the other person. It is a nasty emotion.
Paul did not simply pick these characteristics of love at random. He chose to remind the church that love does not envy because the Corinthians had a real problem with envy. To understand why they had such a problem, it is helpful to consider the context in which the Corinthian church lived.
The city of Corinth was a gateway between Europe and Asia. It was therefore a large and significant commercial city as part of the Roman Empire. The culture of Corinth was saturated with Greek philosophical ideas that undervalued, even disdained the body and elevated the soul. The Corinthian Christians had not shed these ideals and so they prized the “knowledge and wisdom of spiritual existence”. Therefore, the church had a serious problem with intellectual pride about their spiritual experiences. There was a great deal of boasting and competition in the church. It did not help that they were arrogant and admired the sophisticated rhetoric of Greek philosophy.
If we look at chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, we see that the competitive attitude pervaded the whole church and dominated their interactions with each other. The Corinthian Christians were proud of their supposed spirituality. But Paul admonished the church: “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Cor. 3:1-3 ESV). Paul goes on in this chapter to rebuke them for the different factions that had developed in the church, with different groups following different leaders. What they thought was the height of spirituality, in their jealously and partisanship, Paul calls infantile and fleshly. They had brought the same status-seeking culture that existed in Corinthian society into the church. This was not and is not of the Holy Spirit.
Our culture is not exactly the same as that of ancient Corinth. However, status-seeking is a certainly present in Australian culture. Status-seeking has made its way into the wider church and possibly into this congregation. Sometimes, we too are proud of our spirituality but are really infantile and worldly.
With this bit of background, let’s look at closer context of the statement “love does not envy”. Chapter 13, ‘the Love chapter’, is sandwiched between two chapters about spiritual gifts. Chapter 12 is a more general exposition about the body of Christ and chapter 14 discusses the significance of prophecy and tongues in the church. Chapter 13 is placed where it is to stress the importance of love in the use of spiritual gifts in the church. Gifts are given by the Holy Spirit, and so they must be used in a truly spiritual way, the way the Spirit directs their use. He desires love.
What does envy have to do with spiritual gifts? Ultimately, it should have nothing to do with spiritual gifts. In order to show you why envy has no place in the use of spiritual gifts, I am going to look back into chapter 12. My argument has several points but they each have to do with unity around a central focus. The Trinity is united and therefore works together to accomplish God’s one purpose. The body of Christ is also united around the one confession: Jesus is Lord.
I like to begin with the Trinity. Chapter 12, verses 4 to 6 tell us something about the God we serve. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone” (1 Cor. 12:4-6 ESV). The Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus and God the Father gift people in different ways for different kinds of service and different activities. Yet Spirit, Son and Father are one. That is the historic confession of the Church. There is no competition between the three persons of the Godhead. No envy. They are one in their desire to bless and equip and use the body of Christ.
Because the gifts, service and activities are all given by God, we need to use the gifts, serve one another and do the activities in ways that are consistent with the character of God. What does the Bible say about the character of God, apart from his oneness? There are many things that the Bible tells us about God, but it should come as no surprise that in a sermon about love that I would pick “God is love.” The apostle John says this twice in his first letter. John insists, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8 ESV). A few verses on he says it again, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn. 4:16 ESV). In effect, if we are using spiritual gifts, we are making a claim to know God and belong to him. But the only way to truly know God is to act in love. Spiritual gifts must therefore be used in love. And as I said earlier, the Trinity is one. They love one another and don’t compete with one another. They don’t envy one another. Love has no need to envy.
Now let’s consider the church. Just as God is one and the Trinity work together without competition, so too the body of Christ is intended to also have one focus. That focus is spelled out in the beginning of chapter 12. “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:1-3 ESV). There is one thing that sets apart the Christian from an unbeliever and that is their understanding of Jesus. The Spirit, who lives in Christian believers, enables each to confess, “Jesus is Lord”. This is what the Church has declared from the beginning. This is the central tenet of the Christian faith. In God’s purpose, everything that the Church does is intended to convey this fundamental truth. The opposite statement, “Jesus is accursed” will never come from a person who has the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Paul placed this statement at the beginning of his discussion about spiritual gifts because he wanted the church to understand that the exercise of the gifts is intended to help the body of Christ live as people who have Jesus as Lord. The gifts of the Spirit are not given as ways of acquiring status or of showing off your superior spirituality. Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7 ESV). Every gift is given for the common good. My gifts are for your good and your gifts are for my good. Whatever gift you have is to help me live as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Whatever gift I have is to help you to continually exalt Christ as Lord.
But we are not all the same and we don’t each have the same gifts. The body of Christ is one body, but it has many parts. Having many parts is a good thing. Paul emphasises this by using an analogy to the human body.
“If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body” (1 Cor. 12:15-20 ESV).
If your physical body was made up entirely of eyes, this would not make much sense. You could see very well but you could not go anywhere. If you were only made of feet, you could go places but never see them or hear them or taste them. No one wants a body made up entirely of ears. The body of Christ made up of people all with the same gift would not make sense either. Yet for some reason, people envy others when those others have different spiritual gifts. We want to have what the other person has. We tend to envy the people with the gifts we deem most desirable. But just for a moment, imagine that each person in this church had the same gifts. If every person was a prophet, who would do the pastoral care? If every person were a healer, who would teach the Bible? If every person only spoke in tongues, who would lead the singing? If every person had gifts of service, who would encourage others? If the church were full of Bible teachers, who would greet visitors?
Since it makes good sense to have different gifts in the church, why do I need to envy you? If I am a foot and not an eye, that does not make me less a part of the body. If I am the one with the gift of teaching and not the gift of leading the singing, does that mean I am not part of the body of Christ? Of course not. I don’t need to envy you and your gifts. You don’t need to envy me and my gifts.
Love solves the problem of envy. Love is the opposite of bitter envy. If we have the one goal, to exalt Jesus as Lord as we live Christian lives, then love is the means to that goal. And God has equipped his people to love one another through the Holy Spirit. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5 ESV). Because the Holy Spirit lives in us as Christians, we can be imitators of the God who is love.
Because I am convinced by the gospel that God loves me, I can love God and trust that he is good. Because God is good, he gives good gifts to his children. So I know that the Holy Spirit carefully chose which gifts he has given me. He carefully chose which gifts he gave to you. When I envy you and resentfully wish that your gifts were mine, I show that I don’t trust God’s goodness to me; I don’t believe that God loves me.
If I love others in the body of Christ, I have no need to envy what they have. I can rejoice in the good gifts that you have been given, even though I do not have them. I can be happy for you because the same good and loving God gave you those gifts. He gave you those gifts to help me live out the confession, “Jesus is Lord”. If I love you, I can use my gifts to help you to live as if Jesus is Lord. This is not a competition. Love understands that my gifts are given to benefit you. Envy has no place in the use of spiritual gifts. We have the same goal and we attain that goal through love, not through envy.
I am not made to live without your help and you are not made to live without my help. In my physical body, my body parts don’t envy each other because it is quite obvious that bodies work better with cooperation not one part feeling superior to the other. Envy blinds us to the truth that we need each other. Love, however, opens our eyes to our mutual need of one another and prompts us to find ways to serve one another and encourage one another. When everyone works together to use their gifts in love instead of envying each other, Jesus is glorified and the body of Christ grows stronger.
At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves the question, “Do I envy the spiritual gifts that others in this church have?” I know that I have envied the gifts of others and the ministries of others. It is likely that many people here have that same problem. So what are we going to do about that envy?
The scriptural answer is to substitute love for envy. Instead of envying the spiritual gifts that the other person has, consider how you might use your spiritual gifts to build up that person. Your gifts can help the other person to live as if Jesus is Lord, but only if you abandon the need to compete and instead focus on using these in love. Instead of trying hard to outdo one another in possessing spiritual gifts, as if the Christian life were a competition, strive to outdo one another in love.
It is not always easy to do this and for this reason we need to pray for help. In prayer we can surrender our envy and ask God to give us his love for others in its place. Since envy is such an intense emotion, I encourage you to bring this problem to God on a regular basis. Let’s do that together now.